On March 11, 1939, the West Virginia Legislature passed the state’s first law regulating surface mining. Once referred to as strip mining, surface mining strips away earth, rock, and vegetation—known as overburden—to expose coal deposits.
Coal companies began surface mining commercially in West Virginia as early as 1916. However, the state’s rugged terrain made it unprofitable in most places. The arrival of diesel machinery, trucks, and highways allowed the industry to break from its reliance on railroads and to develop surface mines.
As the practice increased, its environmental impact became more apparent. It turned into a political hot topic starting in the late 1960s. Governor Hulett Smith appointed a special task force to address the issue, and other politicians, including Jay Rockefeller, stridently opposed the practice.
In the 1990s, a new form of surface mining, mountaintop removal, became more common. This more invasive method provides access to coal that would’ve been left behind by traditional strip mining. In recent years, tensions over mountaintop removal have risen between those wanting to boost the state’s diminishing coal industry and activists wanting to protect the environment.
Devin Mefford is sitting in the squat metal buggy of a modified mantrip, the train-like shuttle coal miners use to travel underground. Mefford is dressed for work, in a hardhat and a navy shirt and pants with lime green reflective stripes.
It’s a uniform his father and grandfather — both Kentucky coal miners — would be familiar with.
Mefford does go into a mine every day, but not for the coal. He’s the tour guide at Portal 31, a train ride through a once-operational coal mine in Harlan County.
“People are amazed,” the 21-year-old says, gesturing to the dark mine entrance behind him.
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Portal 31 tour guide Devin Mefford.
Portal 31 first opened in 1917. A subsidiary of U.S. Steel operated the mine and built the nearby community of Lynch, which was at the time the world’s largest coal camp. At its height, 10,000 people lived in the community, including a diverse immigrant population from more than 30 countries.
When it closed its doors in 1963, Portal 31 had produced more than 120 million tons of coal. More than 40 years later, in 2009, the mine reopened — this time to tourists.
For 35 minutes visitors ride the rail cars, often in pitch darkness, on a journey not just through the mine, but back in time. The drawling voice of an actor playing a miner named Mike Mackenzie, or Mac, narrates.
“We’re going to visit the miners and see how it’s changed over the years,” he says. “First stop, 1919.”
An animatronic miner materializes out of the darkness. Another actor gives voice to an Italian immigrant named Joseph, who recounts what it was like for the thousands of people who came to work in the mines in the early 1900s. Next to his lifelike form is a robotic mule and chirping canary.
“The mine she’s cool and safe,” he says. “You will see to that won’t you cantante. As long as I can hear your song I know I’m safe.”
Visitors hear what it was like to mine for coal before and after mechanization. They also learn about Harlan County’s bloody conflicts over union organizing.
“This is a story that never needs to die. It’s a story that needs to be told,” Nick Sturgill, director of Portal 31 said. “People need to understand what these guys went through, but they also need to understand how prosperous a place this was at one time — what coal not only did for this city, but for this region, for this country, for this entire world.”
He said about 5,000 visitors from around the world take the ride under Black Mountain each year. It’s a bright spot for Lynch, which today is home to just a few hundred residents.
Like many former mining communities, in recent years Lynch and neighboring towns have turned their sights on attracting tourists. It’s often a costly endeavor, but in recent years the federal government has expanded its support for repurposing old mine lands as new economic engines, including to draw new visitors.
Federal Role
Portal 31 was part of that effort. In 2018, the attraction was awarded a $2.55 million Abandoned Mine Land Pilot grant. The funding will be used to update the ride as well as nearby historic buildings for use as retail and office space. Some of the money is slated to go to a new parking lot and scenic overlook at nearby Black Mountain.
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A sign for Portal 31 in Lynch, Kentucky.
“The main outlook on the AML grant is to really just be a shot in the arm for all of Lynch as well as Harlan County,” Sturgill said.
Central Appalachia has thousands of acres of abandoned mine sites that can threaten local economies and people’s health and safety. In 1977, Congress created the Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Program to clean them up. The funds come from fees paid by active coal mine operators on each ton of coal mined. The fee and authorization of the AML Program is set to expire in 2021 without Congressional action.
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The AML Program chiefly provides funding for reclamation. In the last five years, federal support has grown for a slightly different approach — going beyond merely sealing mine portals and treating polluted water to supporting projects that could grow local economies.
The Appalachian Regional Commission in 2015 began investing in coal-impacted communities through Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization, or POWER Initiative. Congress appropriated money from the U.S. Treasury to create the AML Pilot program in 2016, aimed at not only boosting reclamation work in the highest-need Appalachian states, but promoting projects that spur economic development and growth on abandoned mine lands.
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“There’s significant economic benefits that communities can get from embracing mine reclamation,” said Joey James, with the Reclaiming Appalachia Coalition, which advocates for sustainable reclamation investment. “There’s also opportunities to repower some of these sites that were once the lifeblood of these communities.”
James, who is a senior strategist at West Virginia-based Downstream Strategies, said projects with federal backing can attract other investors looking to make an impact.
“While these federal programs are really, really important, and we need to have them, I think what the AML Pilot program does is it offers an opportunity to develop enterprises on former mine sites that might pull private capital and create models for redeveloping and reusing mine sites that won’t rely entirely on federal funding,” he said.
Another federal proposal, the RECLAIM Act, would accelerate reclamation of abandoned mine land by dispersing $1 billion of Abandoned Mine Land funds over a 5-year period with an eye toward economic development. That bill has not been passed by Congress despite bipartisan support.
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Critics argue the millions poured into these programs have failed to produce the desired outcomes. Some efforts planting lavender or apple trees on old strip mines have floundered. James said it’s important to objectively assess the effectiveness of projects receiving federal funding.
“If states are investing in projects that aren’t providing that opportunity in the future, we need to think of how we can be better,” he said.
Growing Pride
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Devin Mefford emerges from Portal 31.
Back inside Portal 31, the mantrip snakes its way back toward daylight.
A group of visitors from South Carolina is milling around in the small gift shop. They’re visiting the area on a mission trip. A gaggle of middle school-aged kids excitedly share what they learned.
“We learned how difficult it was and how dangerous it is for them,” one says. Another adds his amazement that Portal 31 holds the record for most coal mined in a single day — a record set in 1923.
Mefford, the guide, takes questions at the end of the tour. He says the most common one he’s asked is if coal is coming back.
“In all honesty, coal mining is a thing of the past, and it’s sad to say that for small towns like mine,” he says.
But he adds that makes Portal 31, and federal investment into both preserving and showcasing Kentucky’s coal heritage, even more important.
“Every person in this community deserves to have something to be proud of, and that’s what we do here,” he said.
The nearly two-month blockade of a Kentucky railroad track is coming to an end as unpaid coal miners end their protest in order to take new jobs, start classes, or move away from their coal-dependent communities.
When coal company Blackjewel abruptly declared bankruptcy in July, it left some 1100 Appalachian coal miners in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia without pay. On July 29, five miners blockaded a train full of coal preparing to leave a Blackjewel facility in Harlan County, Kentucky. The miners’ rallying cry was “No Pay, No Coal.”
But after 59 days on the tracks, the protest is coming to an end.
Felicia Cress is married to a former Blackjewel miner, and has been at the protest since the first day.
“This happened because we got shafted, which happens all the time,” Cress said. “You got these rich people that s*** on these poor people, and people just overlook it.”
She said even though her family has to move on, the relationships forged through the protest will stay with her.
“It was a bad situation that made us come together, stay there day and night, through the rain, through the blazing sun,” she said. “We have now friendships, you know, we have a bond.”
Felicia’s husband is currently looking for work. She said her bank has threatened to foreclose on her home unless she finds money for her mortgage payment by Saturday.
Hundreds of Blackjewel miners in Kentucky and Virginia have still not been paid. But the protesters can claim some important victories.
West Virginia miners received owed wages earlier this month. The protest drew international attention, helped win miners a portion of their back pay, and highlighted the state’s failure to collect bond payments from companies like Blackjewel, as the law requires.
The train load of coal the miners blocked will remain where it is until a ruling from a West Virginia bankruptcy judge. That ruling is expected in October.
Labor leader Arnold Miller was born in Kanawha County on April 25, 1923. The son and grandson of coal miners, Miller quit school at age 16 to become a miner himself.
He served in the Army in World War II. During the D-Day invasion, he was severely wounded in the face by machine-gun fire and lost most of his left ear. He underwent 19 operations in military hospitals.
Returning home after the war, he eventually found a mining job. But, in 1970, black lung disease and arthritis forced him to retire from the mines.
In 1969, as leader of a union local, he helped lead a three-week coal strike that led to passage of West Virginia’s first black lung compensation law. In 1972, Miller defeated the corrupt United Mine Workers of America national president, Tony Boyle.
Miller was the first true rank-and-file miner to head the labor union. During his presidency, he liberalized UMWA rules to give miners more of a say in their union.
Due to health problems, Arnold Miller resigned as UMWA president in 1979. He died six years later in Charleston at age 62.
Educator Booker T. Washington was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia, on April 5, 1856. After the Civil War, he relocated to Malden, a few miles east of Charleston, where he attended a one-room school for blacks.
He also was tutored by Viola Ruffner, whom he later credited for instilling in him the qualities of cleanliness and hard work.
After graduating from Hampton Institute in Virginia, Washington returned to West Virginia as a teacher. In 1879, he went back to Hampton as a professor. But when school was out, he’d come home to work in West Virginia’s coal mines.
In 1881, he opened a college for African-American teachers in Tuskegee, Alabama. Tuskegee Institute would become one of the country’s finest schools for blacks. And Washington would become the nation’s unofficial spokesman for African-Americans. He was controversial, though, in some circles for urging cooperation among whites and blacks.
Booker T. Washington returned regularly to West Virginia to visit family members and make speeches. He died in Tuskegee in 1915 at age 59. A monument of Washington is located on the state capitol grounds in Charleston.
Dr. I. E. Buff died in Charleston on March 14, 1974, at age 65. Buff was the first physician to protest publicly that many coal miners’ deaths were…
Dr. I. E. Buff died in Charleston on March 14, 1974, at age 65. Buff was the first physician to protest publicly that many coal miners’ deaths were inaccurately being labeled as heart attacks.
He argued that the coronaries were being caused by a widespread disease known commonly as black lung. He suggested that as many as half of West Virginia’s 40,000 miners suffered from black lung.
Initially, he was opposed by unlikely sources, such as the Democrat newspaper the Charleston Gazette and the United Mine Workers of America. Buff joined forces with fellow doctors Donald Rasmussen and Hawey Wells to spread the word at miner rallies. While the other doctors touted their research, Buff, an accomplished showman, was the star performer at these events.
I. E. Buff deserves much of the credit for pressuring the legislature to modernize the state’s workers’ compensation law to cover black lung. He also played a key role in lobbying Congress to pass the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which capped the legal amount of coal dust allowed in mines and provided compensation for black lung victims.
